Biomech, a startup founded by Ukrainians Nikolay Pavlov and Sergei Shiyan, releases their fitness app Street Workout App for iPhone. Billed as the only app which can operate hands-free throughout the workout. According to the company, the app is going to be a bodyweight-resistence alternative to the popular Runkeeper.

The app works by measuring different exercises that the user completes. The company says that digital-signal processing and propietary machine-learning algorithms enables the app to understand which exercise the user is completing and record the reps. This squats version is the first released, but we’re told that later updates will introduce push-ups, pull-ups, dips, and other exercises. The app also allows users to plug in their headphones and listen to their own motivational trainer.

I spoke with Pavlov and he said that the goal for his company is to create the next generation of fitness apps for mobile users and that they will use the phone’s built-in accelerometer to be able to identify exercises being performed and to automatically record reps for the user. Pavlov also told me that the initial investor for their company is his friend and former employer, Alexander Medovoy, founder of AltexSoft. This past December, Medovoy backed this startup with $100,000 (77,000 euro). The company is based in California, but they’ve decided to maintain a connection to the CEE region with a development center in Ukraine.